Sunday, September 29, 2013

A new computer, a timely inheritance

My old computer finally had to be replaced. Its keyboard had started to lose keys; the CD player, wireless modem and microphone had never worked well and it was highly susceptible to over-heating. The battery had long ago died and could not be replaced. I was still happy to use it until for some reason the power consumption dimmed the screen brightness to something like half the original level. This solved the over-heating problems, but also meant I had to increase the font size to 24 before I could read anything on the screen. A very awkward situation.

Along with my slightly used new computer came some exciting new choices. I needed to partition it and get a hold of a linux OS and a windows OS. I'd been using Slacko Puppy linux which is a mere 100 MB in size. I was very happy with this version, which installs in about 15 minutes. But I thought with a properly working more modern machine I could go for a larger, more complete operating system. I downloaded the latest Ubuntu (because of its 'Asian language support') and the latest Mint. Both are about 700 MB. I tested both and rejected Ubuntu because of its awful user interface - I couldn't even find a command line terminal, and accepted Mint, which happily had no problems displaying Asian languages.

I ran into problems when it came to obtaining and installing windows. The computer didn't come with a windows CD so I had to look for windows to download. I chose two versions of xp pro and tried to install via usb memory stick. No luck. After burning to CD, one of the versions seemed to work. At least it installed without any error messages. The problems came later, no wifi capability, and no sound. There are probably other problems I haven't yet discovered. At the moment I'm downloading a 3.1 GB version of windows 7 and will try that once it arrives. Maybe by that time, I will have decided I can do without a windows partition on my computer.

Special thanks go to my late brother-in-law Kwon Young-oo, who died earlier this year. It's his computer I'm using now, and I appreciate the care with which it's been treated. I hope to continue to put it to good use.